In one known package, a continuously-flowing film of wrapping material is manipulated around the articles and sealed to enclose individual (or multiple) articles therein. This type of package can include forming a continuous longitudinal fin seal to longitudinally wrap the material around the articles. End seals can then be formed transversely across the wrapping material with the fin seal extending therebetween. Areas between adjacent flow wrapped articles and coextensive with the end seals can then be cut to singulate the packages.
End seals of such a package can be formed using sealing jaws that clamp the wrapping material adjacent to the articles to apply pressure and heat to seal the layered wrapping material together. One type of sealing jaws use substantially flat sealing surfaces. Another type of sealing jaws use sealing surfaces that have surfaces with non-linear features that extend transversely to the fin seal and parallel to the side edges of the seal jaws, such as the sealing jaws described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,001,075, 4,949,846, and 5,015,223.
Such packages can be utilized to store a variety of articles having a variety of shapes and sizes. When an article has a high profile, the package includes wrapping material to accommodate the width, as well as the height of the article. The width of the package at the food product can be less than at the ends spaced from the food product because the high profile food product can draw in the package film at its width. Stated a different way, the wrapping material accommodating the height of the article transitions to additional width at the end seal. This additional width, however, can deflect vertically as a result of proximity to the high-profile food product. As discussed above, opposing seal jaws clamp the layered packaging material together to create the seal. Disadvantageously, traditional sealing jaws using substantially flat sealing surfaces or non-linear features running parallel to the side edges of the seal jaws can create folds or wrinkles in the end seal during formation thereof because these traditional seal jaws simply clamp down on the vertically deflected additional width, which can fold over such additional width rather than pressing it into alignment with the rest of the end seal.